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judgecorp writes "Yahoo has closed its news and community services in China, having already closed its email services there. A farewell message on Yahoo's Chinese site doesn't say much, but it seems Yahoo is ceding the territory to Chinese firm Alibaba, in whom it has a stake."

Alibaba is well named, although it leads a group of far more than just forty thieves. Anyone tempted to deal with Aliexpress (you only learn the Alibaba joke after you make the mistake) should take the time to search for them on Reseller Ratings.

Because his is a con-man, a thief, pimp, and a liar. As the story goes, he eavesdrops on a group of men in the woods, he has no doubt done this before. As he keep listening, he learns they are thieves and that the men actually stole a vast quantity of riches from all over the land and that they store it in a cave, the mouth of which is guarded by magic. He hears the magic words to open and close the cave and remembers them. After the thieves leave, he decides to steal from them. With only blackness in

I have personally used AliExpress and have an account on their "escrow" system. I have used it for about a year now.

You have to be cautious about what you buy there. Don't buy anything bulky or heavy; the logistics charges will eat you alive.

However, there are a lot of merchants finding things in China like circuit board assemblies and various small parts and offer them in smaller quantities.

I have been bitten a couple of times, but by and large, most of the smaller guys on AliExpress I have bought electronic parts from ( IC's, LED's, resistors, capacitors, modules, and occasionally small tools ) have been on the level with me. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be. I have bought some stuff that was probably a knockoff, but it was good enough for what I needed.

There is a lot of stuff available in China that I have not seen over in the USA yet. I am particularly interested in circuit modules and high-power LED's ( 100 Watt range ) that I do not see over here. Yes.. 100 Watt LED's... about 36 volts at 3 amps. However I will warn you right now if you do not know how to heat sink these, you will not get light for long.

I have about 100 transactions with AliExpress. I have had four disputes with merchants. Of these, the merchant and I resolved it without involving AliExpress's dispute resolution three times, and once I had to escalate the dispute to have the AliExpress dispute resolution team mediate.

This particular one was over a laptop battery pack that was marketed as using high capacity cells. When I tried to use it in my machine, it first identified it as having a substantially lower capacity than that advertised, then a few hours later, something fried in the battery management board, to the extent that the power block charging my machine heated up and there was a hot smell coming from somewhere, and the battery pack was quite warm. The laptop locked up and would not boot. I disconnected the whole shebang and queried the merchant, who wanted me to ship the battery back to China. There was no way I was going to place a lithium battery pack I had no idea of how much overcharge it took onto an airplane. So I ended up disassembling the pack to discover it was indeed made with lower capacity cells, however they were good quality cells - and the battery pack was quite well made - I guess the battery management board fry was a fluke, as I saw no obvious reason for it frying ( you know, stuff like bad solder joints or sloppy assembly ). AliExpress ruled in my favor .

( Thank goodness the laptop itself survived - scared the crap out of me there for a while - the laptop would not boot with that battery in even if the AC adapter was present. Apparently the BIOS sensed a problem with the BMS and would inhibit the startup.)

Two disputes were packaging errors. Upon contacting the merchant, he checked his end and verified and shipped me the correct part.

One merchant apparently sold me something he did not have, and ended up refunding my money. That was a weird one. I tried and tried and tried to open communication with the merchant over it. Eventually the AliExpress transaction monitors timed out over it and automatically cancelled the transaction. I saw the credit show up on my next Visa statement. ( they also sent me emails to the same effect )

But anyway, that's my experience with AliExpress. I order through them for small samples. I am using them to build a product I hope to go into business one day selling. I am hoping one day I will be able to ask my guy in China if he can get me several thousand of an item.

I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it. When China and US are on opposite sides of the planet, the shipping costs often far exceed the cost of the thing you are buying. Go get it from some big retailer that buys them in bulk and uses far more economical ( albeit far slower ) shipping ( as in a ocean vessel ).

100 Watt LED? Would that not be like as bright as the sun? Would that not be bright enough to blind you, as it gives you a tan from 50 feet away?That has to be equivalent to at least a 250 watt normal lightbulb.

I'd say a 100 Watt LED is a misprint. Think about a 100 Watt diode-based laser. They typically use an array of diodes to get to that power level, and they need liquid cooling so they do not burn themselves up while operating.

But, for those who simply will not, you might get what you order, but you very likely will not. The thieves at Alibaba know that they can send you just about anything, and with American postal rates you can't afford to send it back. Alibaba will apparently always side with their thieves, even if the thief doesn't dispute what you say.

In my case I ordered a 2000 lumen flashlight. I received a flashlight, but it was a cheaper 1200 lumen flashlight

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be.

I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it.

and, from you...

Certainly don't trust any filtered feedback you find on the Aliexpress site

Point taken. As I said, I have had an account on AliExpress for about a year now. I left some bad feedback about that merchant that sold

errr Alibaba and Aliexpress are like ebay. I don't "deal" with them. I use their platform to deal with others. And so far (mostly electronics and electrical components) they have had the same success rate as ebay for me, and several of the sellers I've dealt with I have continued to deal with outside of Alibaba.

I had a problem with one seller, sent the wrong thing, and when I contacted the seller they were apologetic and sent the correct item.

Alibaba is well named, although it leads a group of far more than just forty thieves. Anyone tempted to deal with Aliexpress (you only learn the Alibaba joke after you make the mistake) should take the time to search for them on Reseller Ratings.

I've placed more than 20 orders in last 4 months, via AliExpress, and have received all of them, in timely manner and all items were correct and working. Not a single problem. Well, there was 1 order that got delayed, but seller contacted me and notified me about it and asked me if I don't mind waiting few days.

I placed two orders via AliExpress recently. The first item was cancelled for an unspecified reason. The second one arrived and it was defective.

Neither one of us can learn anything from these anecdotes because we don't discuss any details, like what was purchased

Good thing I only spent ten bucks. Hmm, clickclickclick... looks like I have to manually escalate my dispute, because the seller isn't responding. Why doesn't the system do this for me? Answer, it's a scam.

if you want to buy from a company that acts as a frontman and not through a site that connects you to seller then use something else.. like dealextreme. of course lot of the stuff over there is crap too, but hey, it's cheap crap and sometimes fits the bill perfectly.

When I read this story I found myself reacting with a great yawn. China is a very difficult place for an American Internet firm to do business because of the virulent corruption throughout its government and economy in general and the nonexistent rule of law, a court system that is not independent of the government in other words. Incidentally, these facts as well as some others will eventually lead to the collapse of China's economy.

Well, I wasn't thinking of protectionism as being one of the "some others" but more or less right.

Another thing which is killing the Chinese economy is the lack of democracy. I don't mean democracy in terms of the way American government is organized and operates because as democracies go, it's not very democratic. Democracies necessarily require that the citizens are guaranteed a full set of civil rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, expression, and association and, regardless of what many

I should have said that the Chinese economy is doomed to stagnation and decline without democratic reforms. They are coming, the Chinese people want it, the allegedly Communist party in power cannot kill enough people to stop it.

I don't mean democracy in terms of the way American government is organized and operates because as democracies go, it's not very democratic. Democracies necessarily require that the citizens are guaranteed a full set of civil rights, especially the right to freedom of speech, expression, and association

Nonsense. This is neither what the word democracy means, nor the source of its strength. What you're describing sounds like a constitutional republic. There's no constitution to restrict the powers of the government of the UK, for instance, but it seems to be a pretty well functioning democracy.

Democracy's strengths are that it generally does a good job of keeping out of power those who would slaughter their own people, and that it gives the people some sense of empowerment and sense of having a government

You sould as if you beleive organizing a protest anywhere makes any difference to anything.

Well, it does make a difference actually, people seem to think they are somehow 'free' because they can organize a protest that noone cares about. Same like people think they are free because they get to 'vote'.

I'm free because I can take my things and go live in the woods. That has nothing to do with any laws or nations or anything. It has to do with my skills. I actually _could_ live free in the woods if I chose to do so. Everyone thinks moose are free, yet they get hunted down and shot. They die, but they lived free. They took shit from nobody. They decided themselves what to do and when. And that is the essence of freedom. Every time you do something differently because of a law and not because the way you do

Another way of making your argument is to say that if the US government were to ban protest at the National Mall tomorrow, you would not feel a sense of loss or think worse of the US government. Because that's essentially what you're saying when you imply that there is no difference.